A big thank you to all the members of the General Assembly who voted for SB 3 last session. Our reward for your bravery — higher utility bills!
If you recall, SB 3 was the groundbreaking legislation that requires utility companies to generate increasing percentages of their energy from renewable resources each year regardless of whether renewable energy generation is cost effective or not.
Well, we're starting to see the first effects that really is not.
Progress Energy received approval from the NC Utilities Commission yesterday for a 10.2 percent rate increase, or in other words, to collect $424 million from rate payers over the next three years.
And the reason Progress Energy gives for the need to increase rates: higher fuel prices (which have now come down) and "costs associated with energy efficiency and renewable-energy efforts
mandated by the state’s energy legislation, adopted in 2007." (AKA SB 3).
So thanks again members of the General Assembly, I get to pay more to your regulated monopoly so you can run back home to your constituents and say you're doing something about global warming (as if you had that kind of influence to control solar cycles).
What you're really doing is passing on a de facto tax increase (and a very highly regressive one at that) to subsidize the renewable energy industry. More corporate welfare, just in a different form.
You know that the next step will be, of course, an increase in state subsidies to help lower income families pay for escalating utility bills.
This is how the “green” movement and the expanding welfare state go hand in hand.
Please don’t confuse the lemmings with facts.